Untitled Document
backthen poem #1
when I had to be away
I used to leave four
casseroles
in the fridge and a chart that
covered the fridge door
telling
where and when everyone had to be
and who got what medicine
when
including cats and dogs and
lists of sitters’ numbers
in
descending order of dependability
and where the clean socks
were
as if he were an absolute idiot
and couldn’t do anything
for himself
and he didn’t do anything for himself
either which
makes of course two idiots
© Jacqueline Jackson 2007
Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: a
poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no
more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And
successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as
well as the images those words conjure up, but may also take advantage of
the arrangement of type on a page. Notice how this little poem by
Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space
around it to help convey the nature of its subject.
Echo
A lone voice
in the right
empty space makes
its own best
company.
Poem copyright (c) 2005 by Robert West. Reprinted
from Best Company (Blink
Chapbooks, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005), with permission of the author.
Introduction copyright © 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. American
Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation
(www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
Ted Kooser served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from
2004-2006. For more information, go to www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2007.
